People searching for the truth about UFOs

What exactly is an unidentified flying object, is it important?

"Important! Because I want to know what that is." This is Lu Yinxing's answer.

Since September, there have been reports of unidentified flying objects in cities such as Shanghai, Jinan, and Wuhan. Among them, the unidentified flying object incident in Jinan is somewhat suspicious. From September 1st to 6th, the astronomical camera of Jinan Seven Star Observatory recorded images of three unidentified flying objects. The video was all captured by the Seven Star Observatory where Lu Yinxing is located.

However, it was also because of these videos that Lu Yinxing, the head of Jinan Seven Star Observatory, who was busy searching for the truth, fell into a whirlpool. On the one hand, he wants to find out the real UFO in the video, and on the other hand, netizens who are interested in finding out the UFO join in, or analyze together, or ridicule, or abuse. There is a craze for traffic on the Internet.

Black shadows appear

On September 5th, Sang Tian, a staff member of the Jinan Astronomical Society who came to help, arrived early at the village road on the mountainside.

At 9:30, it was time to meet up with Lu Yinxing. Sangtian dialed the phone and said, "Are you there?" "Just picked up Zhang Anru. We have already reached the highway." Lu Yinxing replied.

"The time you're late is enough for me to wash my car," murmured Sangda.

The road conditions from the center of Jinan to the Seven Star Observatory are good, but Lu Yinxing does not plan to drive at a high speed. Taking advantage of the gap between driving, he sorted out the unidentified flying object incident that occurred two days ago for another astronomy enthusiast, Zhang Anru, from beginning to end.

The Seven Star Observatory is a folk science popularization and research base jointly established by the Jinan Astronomical Society and local astronomy enthusiasts, mainly monitoring and researching near Earth objects. It is located in the southern mountainous area of Jinan City, with an altitude of about 700 meters, far from the city, and less affected by light damage, making it suitable for stargazing.

On the early morning of September 1st, Lu Yinxing and Niu Guihua, Secretary General of Jinan Astronomical Society, stayed overnight at the Seven Star Observatory to maintain equipment. At around 5 o'clock, Lu Yinxing flipped through the video recorded by the astronomical camera in the early morning of that day. This is his daily habit. The observatory's camera records videos in the sky 24 hours a day, which can monitor meteors crossing the sky at night. After a brief appearance of dynamic objects such as meteors, airplanes, birds, and animals, the system will automatically output a video of several seconds for users to focus on viewing.

A 14 second video appears in the file list. This is a video recorded around 2am, in which Orion, a constellation that is difficult to observe on summer nights, can be vaguely distinguished from the sky. Suddenly, a black figure appeared in the sky on the right side of the screen, dragging a long tail as if emitting black smoke. It took a big turn and plunged into the mountains. This is the first time an astronomical camera has recorded such a video.

Screenshot of the first video captured of an unidentified flying object. Respondents provide

Lu Yinxing swept away his fatigue and rushed to the rooftop of the observatory to check the camera. He first needs to eliminate interference from the lens: no water mist, everything on the camera is normal. Lu Yinxing followed the camera and saw that the landing point of the black shadow was likely on the southeast slope of the observatory. At dawn, he wore sandals and went down the mountain slope to search for it, but to no avail.

That morning, it was the beginning of the new semester for my daughter. At this moment, he had to hurry down the mountain to buy breakfast for his daughter and take her to class.

Along the way, Lu Yinxing's mind was full of thoughts, what exactly was this black shadow? He originally wanted to ask Niu Guihua beside him, but Niu Guihua, who had been busy all night, had already fallen asleep. It wasn't until the afternoon that he showed Niu Guihua a video. At that time, Niu Guihua thought that this was probably a problem with the camera lens.

Lu Yinxing, who had no idea, decided to post the video online and wanted to hear the opinions of his fellow astronomers.

On September 3rd, Lu Yinxing invited two talented individuals from his circle, a doctoral student in astronomy and a professor of mathematical economics, to create an orbital data model of a flying object based on the video, in order to determine its approximate landing point. Can display data, unable to determine. To determine the landing point, at least two cameras at different positions must simultaneously capture the image. Three people went together to search for mountains near the observatory, and also searched for villages passing by. But the cameras in the village are all aimed at the ground, and the villagers did not hear any special movements on the night when the unidentified flying object appeared.

After several unsuccessful attempts to search, Lu Yinxing made a preliminary judgment: the truth was mostly an expected ordinary object. If that thing is a living creature like birds and insects, then it is definitely impossible to find; If it is a physical object such as a drone or a satellite that falls due to over limit operation, then according to the dense vegetation of the mountain, "even if that thing falls one meter in front of it, it is still invisible. Perhaps we will have to wait until winter when the grass is dry before looking."

But Lu Yinxing couldn't forget the dark shadows in the video, and his thoughts on what to do became even stronger. So on September 5th, Lu Yinxing once again invited drone expert Sangtian and some astronomy enthusiasts to search the mountains together.

Search for Mountains

More than 20 minutes later, Lu Yinxing drove to the meeting point on the mountainside.

"Get in my car quickly, it has enough power and can run fast on mountain roads," urged Sangtian. Watching Sang Tian's urgent roar, Lu Yinxing, sitting in the passenger seat, tightened the armrest inside the car. "Let's also fasten the seat belts for the two seats in the back row," said Sangtian as he pressed the accelerator and everyone in the car leaned back.

Lu Yinxing believes that Sangtian may be one of the most worried people who couldn't invent the space shuttle and curvature engine. During a meeting, in order to save time running to the opposite mountain to retrieve keys, Sangtian flew a drone to the open space in the opposite valley, and then sent someone to tie the keys to the drone and fly straight back. The task, which was supposed to take almost an hour back and forth, took Sangtian 10 minutes to retrieve the key.

In fact, Sangtian's anxiety has a reason. From 10am to noon during the day, it is the time when the sun shines directly on the mountains and forests, and the interference of tree shadows will be minimized.

The mountains of Qilu are steep, and many places are inaccessible cliffs. The dense coniferous forests resemble tangled hemp draped over the mountains. Sangtian's drone has high clarity and can zoom in to enlarge images by 7 times, making it the best tool for mountain searching.

The mountains in Qilu are steep, making it difficult for ordinary people to climb up. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

At this time, the planetarium had already gathered several astronomy enthusiasts to form a mountain search team for the day. Sangtian arrived at the rooftop, released the drone, and recorded a video. On the other hand, Lu Yinxing changed into sportswear and sneakers, took Zhang Anru, and went down the mountain slope to search for more. The remaining people are searching for clues on the rooftop and nearby. Half an hour later, Sangtian recalled the drone and projected the video onto the television in the activity hall of the planetarium. Everyone gathered together and screened out the locations that needed further careful investigation based on the video. After determining the approximate orientation, the drone took off again.

Before the drone searches the mountains, it is necessary to confirm the approximate landing point of the unidentified flying object. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

Release the drone. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

Lu Yinxing went down the mountain slope to search for the mountains, but there were no new discoveries. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

After a while, Sangtian shouted, "What is this black shadow?" The crowd gathered around, "Oh, I'm sorry! This is the projection of the cable car." Sangtian suddenly issued a false alarm.

False alarms have become a joy in the monotonous mountain search process and have also opened up everyone's chatterbox.

"What exactly are you talking about?" Sangtian stared closely at the drone screen and muttered to himself.

"Can it be a 'water droplet'?" Zhang Anru asked.

"Is it the 'Trisolarans' coming?" Astronomy enthusiast Huang Lie interjected. In the science fiction novel "The Three Body Problem," humans refer to the cosmic probes created by the Three Body civilization as water droplets.

"Saying it's aliens and atmospheric creatures like dragons is just a joke." Lu Yinxing has answered several times online and offline, but currently there is not enough evidence to prove the existence of aliens. When astronomy enthusiasts gather, the existence of aliens in the universe is often a topic of discussion. But in the UFO event on Earth, Lu Yinxing believes that it is mostly not related to aliens. "For example, in the third type of contact incident that occurred in Fenghuang Mountain, Heilongjiang Province at the end of the last century, the protagonist Meng Zhaoguo claimed to have been attacked by aliens and brought with him a UFO piloted by aliens. There were also television stations filming the incident in three episodes. However, it cannot be denied that from the results, this was a very successful commercial hype at the time."

Lu Yinxing turned the topic back to a more practical discussion. "The term 'water droplet' refers to water droplets attached to the lens."

However, the "water droplet theory" was the earliest possibility that Lu Yinxing ruled out. "Both humidity and temperature do not have the conditions to generate water droplets. Water droplets are affected by gravity and their movement trajectory should be vertical downwards."

"Can it be blown by the wind?" "Do you see the tree in the video shaking?" Lu Yinxing asked in reverse.

The members of the mountain search team also ruled out the possibility of a meteor, as its appearance is accompanied by bright light; The possibility of "flying sticks" has been ruled out, which is a mysterious phenomenon captured by cameras and is believed to be caused by flying insects flying over the lens at night. However, the current camera's sensitivity mode is vastly different from 20 years ago, and the size of the flying insects does not match the video. The possibility of this incident being caused by flying insects is almost zero. Huang Lie also consulted his military enthusiast friend, "I heard from him that there were no various tasks on the evening of September 1st that would lead to related phenomena."

"One of the remaining possibilities is an aircraft that has exceeded its service limit. Because this thing has a big bend, it means it has autonomous power." This is Lu Yinxing's guess and also the meaning of inviting Sangtian. If it is a physical object falling from the sky, it may have a certain impact on the mountains and trees when it falls, and perhaps traces of unidentified flying objects can be found by searching the mountains.

As he was saying, "Come and take a look." Sang Tian beside him seemed to have found something. In the camera, a little earthy red suddenly appeared on the cliff covered with lush green vegetation.

"Zoom in." Lu Yinxing observed closely, "This should just be a naturally dead pine tree."

"Perhaps aliens disguised themselves as plants?" Huang Lie said with a smile. Lu Yinxing did not answer.

Based on the recorded video, Lu Yinxing analyzed frame by frame for any traces left by unidentified flying objects. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

Everyone is discussing what unidentified flying objects will be. Respondents provide

"UFO" in summer nights

After lunch, most of the astronomy enthusiasts left and the drones took off again. Lu Yinxing's gaze turned towards the mountain valley as the rapidly advancing drone moved. "I have always been curious about the unknown," said Lu Yinxing.

Lu Yinxing, born in 1986, has been interested in astronomy since childhood. Before computers and the Internet became popular, Lu Yinxing opened the magazine Astronomy Lover. On a night in mid July 1994, an all night outdoor movie was shown in the village. That night's sky, Lu Yinxing remembered the sparkling light in the sky, as if he had seen a "UFO", which was accompanied by the bright light and scattered like iron flowers. In the 1980s and 1990s, "UFO" sparked a craze in China, which also influenced Lu Yinxing's thirst for knowledge. Since then, Lu Yinxing has been obsessed with the truth behind the phenomenon.

Around 2011, Lu Yinxing, who had been in the military for over 6 years, met an elderly person practicing Tai Chi in a park while on a mission in Beijing. In addition to chatting, he learned that the old man was a physics professor at Peking University. After learning that Lu Yinxing also had a hobby in astronomy, the old professor invited him to attend Peking University.

In the first few classes, Lu Yinxing didn't bring anything. The old professor struck Lu Yinxing and said, "A good brain is not as good as a bad pen. It is beneficial to write and remember more in a notebook." After demobilization, Lu Yinxing studied physics at Suzhou University under the influence of the old professor. After graduation, he founded a company and engaged in astronomical science popularization training, saving some money in stock trading.

In 2018, Lu Yinxing and Niu Guihua jointly established the Jinan Seven Star Observatory. The entire observatory is equipped with 12 astronomical cameras. One of the professional astronomical spheres, along with its telescope, costs a total of 400000 yuan and can see deep space astronomical landscapes such as the M31 Nebula and the Crab Nebula. The main work of the observatory is to monitor near Earth objects, including meteors, and it will also undertake observation projects from some sister observatories. He also completed a paper on "Observations of Neutral Hydrogen" using observation data collected by the observatory.

After reaching adulthood, Lu Yinxing still needs to accomplish one thing. He tried hard to recall all the memories of the summer of 1994, wanting to know what the "UFO" he saw that night was.

With the Internet and a group of like-minded friends, the answer emerges. In the days starting at 4:15 am Beijing time on July 17, 1994, 21 fragments of Comet Sumek Levy 9 began to collide with Jupiter one after another. After each fragment collides with Jupiter, it almost always produces a faint visible flash to the naked eye.

The process of finding the truth is often lengthy. The entire cycle is like a hunter who has been waiting for a long time catching prey, and a fisherman who has been sitting quietly for a day catching big fish. Lu Yinxing is not good at philosophy, but he has a profound thinking in this regard. Waiting for meteors is one of his greatest hobbies, even if it only has a fleeting life. "I love meteors the most. Until now, every time I see a meteor, I get excited."

Around December 14, 2021, it will be the observation window period for Gemini meteor showers. That night, surveillance footage from the Seven Star Observatory showed that an unidentified object falling at high speed shattered a piece of tempered glass on the roof. After learning the news, Lu Yinxing's first reaction was that it might be a meteorite.

Looking left and right, no meteorite fragments can be found in the broken glass or on the rooftop. Lu Yinxing bought a piece of tempered glass of the same standard and used a slingshot to shoot steel balls at the glass for collision experiments. The result is that the steel ball bounces to one side and the glass shatters. That is to say, the meteorite is highly likely to fall into the forest on one side of the observatory. That time, Lu Yinxing brought a metal detector to search the mountains on a large scale, but nothing was found.

Since September, there have been incidents of unidentified flying objects in many parts of the country, and Lu Yinxing has watched every video. Most of them are trajectory clouds or meteors formed by fairings or aircraft. The true identity of an unidentified flying object is not difficult to distinguish.

The conversation was interrupted by Sangtian's call. "Lu, I really made a discovery this time." The screen shows a 2-3 square meter area of collapsed trees. The possibility of human destruction is low at that location. There are two remaining possibilities, one is the impact of unidentified flying objects, and the other is lightning strikes.

"In winter, find a way to climb up and have a look. Send me the video at night, and I will check every frame," said Lu Yinxing.

Sangtian uses drones to view the mountains. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

Lu Yinxing, Sangtian, and Zhang Anru analyzed the mountain terrain captured by drones. Photo by Zheng Ziyu

Traffic farce

Before preparing to go down the mountain, Lu Yinxing flipped through the video on his phone from the early morning of the 5th. At around 5am, the camera captured two black shadows moving rapidly in a circular motion, with the same wake as the first video. The slightly different thing is the sky.

"Swift!" Lu Yinxing muttered. In the eyes of his friends, Lu Yinxing is not only passionate about astronomy, but also a naturalist who is familiar with the classification and habits of various flowers, birds, insects, and fish. Swallows hovering in the sky and insects curling up into pupae are things he will carefully observe. The newly appearing black figure in the video is likely a Swift flying north. "These types of swifts will first fly north to Siberia, and then fly from Europe to Africa for winter. Now is the season for their migration. The speed and timing of their appearance are in line with the habits of these swifts," explained Lu Yinxing.

"Will the first video be about birds?" Zhang Anru asked. "Uncertain." Lu Yinxing cannot rule out the possibility that it is a physical object such as a drone.

Two days later, Lu Yinxing discovered another video. In this video, a flying object with a bright white light flashed in an irregular trajectory in front of the camera. His first reaction was fireflies, but the light emitted by fireflies was greenish, and fireflies were rarely seen during the white dew season. "Send it all online for netizens to see what it is."

Screenshot of the third video captured of an unidentified flying object. Respondents provide

The firefly images captured by Lu Yinxing are significantly different from the UFO images captured during the third time. Respondents provide

In Lu Yinxing's short video account, the video content is diverse. In addition to a large number of astronomical observation videos, he also shares his daughter's life, his travel experiences, and observations of flowers, birds, insects, and fish. When Lu Yinxing first released the "UFO" video, he thought about asking netizens to advise on what the staff figure was, but did not consider the video's potential popularity.

In the first few days when the video gained attention, Lu Yinxing felt that having traffic was a good thing. The Seven Star Observatory operates at a loss, and its traffic can bring visibility to the Observatory, which is beneficial for its subsequent operation and application for research projects. Perhaps the observatory can still turn losses into profits. Within 6 days, Lu Yinxing released 3 videos in a row, and the topic of "unidentified flying objects discovered in Jinan" began to rise to the hot list.

Traffic can flash like a meteor, but it is also unpredictable and uncontrollable.

In the surveillance footage of the observatory, Lu Yinxing saw someone riding a motorcycle with live streaming equipment, running to the entrance of the observatory to pry the lock and attempt to break into the observatory.

The homestay owner Lao Di has a more sensitive sense of smell than these anchors. His homestay is themed on astronomy, located near the gathering place of motorcycle enthusiasts. After Lu Yinxing's video became popular, he gave an interview to local media in the name of the head of a certain observatory, stating that the black shadow in the video was a "shooting star". The video was once shared by locals and astronomy enthusiasts. In fact, Lao Di only learned about the existence of this UFO from the video and did not participate in the search and research of the UFO.

When asked about the impact of this incident on the operation of homestays, Lao Di's emotions were high: "Originally, our Seven Star Observatory was the most beautiful starry sky in the world. Discovering this will attract more astronomy enthusiasts." He believes that this "UFO" incident can bring more tourists to his homestay. "The construction of this observatory and homestay is mainly for children to study. Many universities and educational institutions in Jinan will bring children here to see the stars."

In fact, there is also a long-standing feud between Lao Di's homestay style observatory and the Seven Star Observatory. The rooftop of Lao Di's homestay is always decorated brightly. Although it is over 500 meters away from the observatory where Lu Yinxing is located in a straight line, in the observatory's camera, the location of the homestay has been shining with overexposed white spots in the first half of the night, which Lu Yinxing believes seriously affects stargazing.

"'Fire meteor 'is obviously nonsense, it's going to make a joke.' 'New grudges and old grudges' made Lu Yin anxious.". Soon, calls from astronomy enthusiasts came one after another, some of whom believed that the "fire meteor" was the inference of Lu Yinxing and Niu Guihua, accusing them of being amateurs.

Shortly thereafter, an article titled "Experts: Can be Recognized as UFO, Very Rare" was published online. And the expert in the text refers to Niu Guihua. "Can it be recognized as a UFO? Do 'UFO' still need to be recognized? This is not my true words." Niu Guihua was very angry.

Some people, in order to gain traffic, processed news reports by Niu Guihua interpreting events, suggesting that the Seven Star Observatory had captured mysterious phenomena such as aliens. This kind of article has angered astronomy enthusiasts who are unaware of the situation. They aimed their spearheads at Lu Yinxing and Niu Guihua. Some astronomy enthusiasts simply kicked Niu Guihua and others out of the group chat on WeChat.

It was originally a serious discussion seeking the truth, but it turned into a farce of gaining traffic. This was unexpected for Lu Yinxing.

Phenomena and Truth

After the video became popular on the Internet, Lu Yinxing received a private letter from Liu Boyang, a well-known popular astronomer and astrophysicist, on Tiktok.

Liu Boyang analyzed that among astronomy enthusiasts, many people use the same astronomical camera from the Seven Star Observatory to observe the sky. Manufacturers of such cameras may use algorithms such as time-domain noise reduction and spatial domain noise reduction to ensure image quality and avoid image blurring. Simply put, this set of algorithms will give the "next frame" a higher weight, reduce the weight of previously recorded frames, and process the image through weighted stacking. If the parameters of the two algorithms are adjusted, it may cause dynamic objects such as birds and animals to leave a gradually disappearing shadow when passing through the screen under low light conditions.

In order to verify his hypothesis, Liu Boyang also used a code algorithm to replicate the drag effect similar to that in the video released by Lu Yinxing.

Liu Boyang suggested to Lu Yinxing that in the future, a rigorous scientific "reproduction" experiment could be conducted using the camera of the observatory. Lu Yinxing agreed.

The original meaning of "UFO" refers to all flying objects that have not known their true identity. In the last century, there was a craze for "UFO" around the world. In November 1978, the People's Daily published "UFO - An Unsolvable" Mystery of the World ", introducing the concept of UFO to China. In the following decades, news of witnessing" UFO "emerged one after another.

In recent years, with the improvement of science and technology, people can easily use the Internet to find the information they want, use mobile phones to record videos, and use software to create all kinds of cool effects. "UFO" is no longer a symbol of mystery, and people's enthusiasm for it has gradually subsided.

Recently, UFO incidents have emerged in many places. On September 12th, the Mexican parliament exhibited the bodies of two suspected aliens; On September 14th, Agence France Presse reported that NASA will release long-awaited research results on unidentified flying objects in the Earth's sky on the same day. The once fading popularity of aliens and mysterious events has once again ignited the curiosity of the public.

In fact, Liu Boyang has deeper concerns.

Humanity has yet to find conclusive evidence to prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life.